


Living in a Dark Place, Dreaming of Light

by achrmy



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-22
Updated: 2013-09-22
Packaged: 2017-12-27 08:32:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/976669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/achrmy/pseuds/achrmy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(A gift for my friend bluestar, with whom I share a love of space and writing.)</p>
<p>Europa, one of Jupiter’s Galilean moons, is theorized to have subsurface oceans located beneath layers of ice and warmed by the tidal forces of the giant gas planet it orbits.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Living in a Dark Place, Dreaming of Light

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bluestar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluestar/gifts).



The world is large, unfathomably large, housed between two domes, one above made of ice, another below made of pressure. It would take millions of geyser cycles to circle the whole world, but much fewer to travel between the domes, the one below, the one above.

The world is cold. 

Cold is good. Cold protects, protects from the moments of catastrophe when water spurts from the dome below, up all the way to the dome above, sending out waves of heat, waves of destroying heat. Worst of all the heat breaks the dome above, carving, breaking until water rushes up into the dome, disappearing, vanishing forever. It takes thousands of cycles, but the cold heals the marks.

The world is dark.

Dark is good. It is the way of things, the way things have always been. Whenever there has been light it comes from far below, pulsing and glowing ominously. What always follows is the wave of heat, the storm of water. 

Long I have dreamed of light, not coming from below, but rather above. Tiny pinpricks of light, so small they do not hurt. I dream of light that does not hurt.

Below the light is deadly, but above there is no light, only darkness.

The darkness is a friend. 

So why dream of the light?

The world is large, unfathomably large.

So why dream of one bigger?

I wonder, but I do not know why. I only dream. Maybe one day I will know why.

One day a storm comes and strikes where one struck before.

The fiery red and orange from down below nearly sends me fleeing far across the world. Such terrible sounds follow as the jet of heated water strikes the upper dome.

That is where I go.

The water is still hot and I internally scream as I pass through, up and up, through the upper dome. I know I go up because I feel the pull down, telling me, Come back down! Here there are friends!

Yes, and you always will be.

I go up very far, unfathomably far. I stop when I see the lights, a bright orange, yellow, and red disk, glowing. Large! Enormous! A jolt of fear hits me. Not what I dreamed of!

I nearly flee.

But the light does not move, does not pulse and up here it is cold, very cold, not hot. So I do not flee.

That is when I see them, tiny pinpricks. Light! Light! The lights of my dreams scattered like bubbles across the darkness surrounding the disk of yellow and orange. 

And then I dream again.

What are they, these pinpricks of light? What is the disk of red and orange above me? Yes, it is above me because I still feel the pull down. 

It hovers over me, less like a looming threat and more like a shelter from the storm.

Come back! Come back! Come back to the darkness, your friend!

Don’t worry. I’ll come back. And I’ll love you more, because now that I know the light I know what you are.


End file.
